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Peanut butter

Paste made from ground peanuts

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  • 8 chapters

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Peanut butter is a nutrient-rich food containing high levels of protein, several vitamins, and dietary minerals. It is typically served as a spread on bread, toast, or crackers and used to make sandwiches (notably the peanut butter and jelly sandwich). It is also used in a number of breakfast dishes and desserts, such as granola, smoothies, crepes, cookies, brownies, and croissants.

History

The earliest references to peanut butter can be traced to Aztec and Inca civilizations, who ground roasted peanuts into a paste. There are reports that 16th century Aztecs used peanut paste for aching gums.

Several people can be credited with the invention of modern peanut butter production processes. The U.S. National Peanut Board credits three modern inventors with the earliest patents related to the production of modern peanut butter. Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, obtained the first patent for a method of producing peanut butter from roasted peanuts using heated surfaces in 1884. Edson's cooled product had "a consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment" according to his patent application which described a process of milling roasted peanuts until the peanuts reached "a fluid or semi-fluid state". He mixed sugar into the paste to harden its consistency.

A businessman from St. Louis named George Bayle produced and sold peanut butter in the form of a snack food in 1894. By 1917, American consumers used peanut products during periods of meat rationing, with government promotions of "meatless Mondays" when peanut butter was a favored choice.

John Harvey Kellogg, known for his line of prepared breakfast cereals, was an advocate of using plant foods as a healthier dietary choice than meat. He was issued a patent for a "Process of Producing Alimentary Products" on May 24, 1898, and used peanuts, although he boiled the peanuts rather than roasting them. Kellogg's Western Health Reform Institute served peanut butter to patients because they needed a food that contained a large amount of protein that could be eaten without chewing. At first, peanut butter was a food for wealthy people, as it became popular initially as a product served at expensive health care institutes.

Although often credited as its inventor, George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter. By the time Carver published his document about peanuts, entitled "How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it For Human Consumption" in 1916, many methods of preparation of peanut butter had already been developed or patented by various pharmacists, doctors, and food scientists working in the US and Canada.

Early peanut-butter-making machines were developed by Joseph Lambert, who had worked at Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium, and Dr. Ambrose Straub who obtained a patent for a peanut-butter-making machine in 1903.

In 1922, chemist Joseph L. Rosefield invented a process for making smooth peanut butter that kept the oil from separating by using partially hydrogenated oil; Rosefield licensed his invention to the company that created Peter Pan peanut butter in 1928. In 1932 he began producing his own peanut butter under the name Skippy. Under the Skippy brand, Rosefield developed a new method of churning creamy peanut butter, giving it a smoother consistency. He also mixed fragments of peanuts into peanut butter, creating the first "chunky"-style peanut butter. In 1955, Procter & Gamble launched a peanut butter named Jif, which was sweeter than other brands due to the use of sugar and molasses in its recipe.

In South Africa, the first peanut butter was produced in 1926 by Alderton Limited in Potgietersrus (now Mokopane), The product proved so popular that Tiger Brands (then Tiger Oats Company) took over the manufacture under the brand name Black Cat, which it still produces.

A related dish named pinda-dokkunnu ('peanut cheese' in Sranan Tongo) existed in Suriname by 1783. This was more solid than modern peanut butter and could be cut and served in slices like cheese. Pinda bravoe, a soup-like peanut-based dish, also existed in Suriname around that time. Peanut butter is referred to as pindakaas ('peanut cheese') in Dutch for this reason, as Suriname was a Dutch colony at that time. When peanut butter was brought onto the market in the Netherlands in 1948, it was not allowed to do so under the name peanut butter. The word butter was specifically reserved for real butter, to avoid confusion with margarine.

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